Turns out spending your retirement curled up in an armchair may not be in the cards if you want to stay strong and active. Aging atrophies your muscles twice as fast as previously thought, and exercise may be the only cure.

It was already well-documented by scientists that muscles shrink and atrophy with age, but a British team of researchers delved in deeper and found that this phenomenon is due to two effects that compound one another: first, older bodies can’t build muscle as quickly as younger ones and second, the hormones which suppress muscle breakdown in the young fail to perform the same action in older bodies.

There’s hope, though—maintaining good blood exchange between the muscles and organs through regular strength and weight training has shown signs of being able to reverse or at least stave off these aging effects. That should tide us over until the development of bionic bodies that will never break down and will let us all benchpress cars.